Tsunade didn't need any help.
Out of the six enemies, she singled out the three charging at the front.
The first lunged at her, blade raised to slash across her collarbone.
Tsunade lowered her center of gravity and pivoted, spinning out from beneath the blade's trajectory.
Her right fist shot upward.
She channeled chakra into her knuckles—not much, just enough.
The fist slamd into the man's jaw with a crisp snap of bone shifting out of place.
The first ti she had heard that sound last night, her hand had trembled.
Now, it didn't.
Not because she had grown used to it, but because she had no ti to be afraid.
The second attacker was a head larger than her, sweeping a long sword across in a wide arc, attempting to overwhelm her with sheer power.
Tsunade didn't retreat. Instead, she stepped forward, planting herself right in the sword's blind spot.
Once she closed the distance, the long blade beca useless.
She slamd her right foot into the side of the man's knee, driving her entire body weight precisely into his lateral ligant.
As a piercing scream rang out, Tsunade gritted her teeth.
As she turned, the third man lunged from behind.
She didn't look back, judging his position by the sound of his footsteps—rear right, one and a half ters.
She drove her elbow backward.
It landed squarely on his temple.
Tsunade stood amidst the three fallen bodies, her knuckles stained with blood.
She tilted her head, her gaze piercing through the dust and the chaos to find Kitahara Kaede. He was a blur of motion against the blade-light of the man in the gray coat, his left arm seeping blood.
Her fist tightened.
'I need to finish this quickly,' she thought. 'Then I can help him.'
***
Things weren't quite as seamless for Jiraiya.
When three enemies surrounded him, he instinctively took two steps back.
It wasn't cowardice; his mind was racing through calculations. His right shoulder was injured, his kunai was in his left hand, and his power was diminished.
In a direct brawl, he wasn't sure he could beat even one of them.
He had to use ninjutsu.
His hands blurred into signs in front of him.
He wasn't fast, but every seal was precise.
He had spent three months grueling over this technique.
When Hiruzen Sarutobi had demonstrated it on the training ground, Kitahara Kaede had mastered it after seeing it once.
Once.
It had taken Jiraiya a week just to barely grasp it, and another two weeks before he could produce five shuriken clones. Then, he had practiced alone for two more months.
Now.
The three enemies charged, the leader less than five ters away.
Jiraiya took a deep breath and unleashed the shuriken.
"Shuriken Shadow Clone Technique!"
The single shuriken exploded in mid-air—one beca two, two beca four, and four beca sixteen. A rain of steel descended, covering the three enemies before them.
Unable to react, the three were pinned to the ground.
Varying numbers of shuriken were embedded in their limbs and torsos. There were no fatal wounds—not because Jiraiya had intentionally held back, but because he still lacked the precision for such control.
But it was enough.
All three were neutralized.
Jiraiya remained in his throwing posture, gasping for air.
His hands were shaking.
He had output too much chakra at once.
But his eyes were strikingly bright.
He had confird one thing: the skill he had spent three months obsessively mastering had not failed him when it truly mattered.
His hard work had paid off.
***
The periter battle was winding down quickly.
Two Shadow Clones swept through the outskirts. The clone on the left took down three enemies in twenty seconds, while the one on the right neutralized two others attempting to flank Tsunade.
Between the two Kaede had dealt with at the start, the three Tsunade had crushed, the three Jiraiya had pinned, and the five the clones had cleared—sixteen enemies had been wiped out.
The remaining enemies, now leaderless and watching their comrades fall one by one, lost the will to fight.
In small groups, they turned and fled, not even bothering to retrieve their weapons.
However, Kitahara Kaede's clones systematically finished them off before their chakra completely depleted.
***
At the center of the battlefield.
The man in the gray coat and Kitahara Kaede had been locked in combat for nearly two minutes.
Finally, Kaede found his opening.
The man's left shoulder—scorched by the previous Great Fireball Technique—was still throbbing with the pain of a burn.
Every ti he swung his sword, the muscles in his left shoulder had to engage, and every movent further tore the wound.
After six swings, his attack speed had dropped by at least twenty percent.
This was exactly what Kitahara Kaede had been waiting for.
He wasn't waiting for a mistake; he was waiting for the man's body to surrender before his will did.
The seventh swing ca—the power was weaker, and there was a microscopic hesitation halfway through the arc.
That was the window.
Kaede dropped low, sliding right under the blade.
The man's pupils contracted. His experience told him what was happening, but his body reacted a fraction of a second too late.
Holding his kunai in a reverse grip, Kaede pivoted around the flank and drove the blade precisely into the tendons of the man's sword-arm forearm.
The sword slipped from the man's grip.
The man in gray let out a muffled groan and reached for a kunai at his waist with his other hand.
Kaede was faster.
He drove his knee hard into the man's ribs.
A dull thud.
A faint *crack* echoed from the ribcage.
The man doubled over, his mouth open, unable to make a sound.
Using the montum, Kaede drove his elbow straight into the back of the man's neck.
The man's eyes rolled back, his knees buckled, and he crashed face-down into the dirt. He twitched twice, then went still.
Kaede stood there, panting heavily.
His chakra was nearly bottod out.
Between the Shadow Clones, the Great Fireball, and the chakra-enhanced knee strike, he had very little left.
Two wounds on his left arm were seeping blood, and a shallow cut from a shuriken on his hip was throbbing with a dull ache.
He looked up. The first thing he saw wasn't the man on the ground.
It was Tsunade.
She stood among her three fallen foes, her chest heaving, blood on her knuckles.
Tsunade was looking at him too.
Her gaze locked onto the bleeding wounds on his left arm, her brows knitting tightly as she stepped toward him.
"You're hurt."
She reached him and began pulling back his sleeve, her movents even more domineering than they had been during the fight.
"Just scratches."
"Shut up and let see."
Her fingers pressed against the edge of the wound, a faint green light glowing at her fingertips—basic dical ninjutsu for hemostasis.
It wasn't a high-level technique; at most, it caused the blood vessels to constrict temporarily to slow the bleeding.
Kaede didn't pull away. He looked down at her.
She had a three-to-four centiter graze on her forearm, and there was a tear in the shoulder of her clothes.
"What about you?"
"I'm fine."
"Liar."
Tsunade glared at him, the corner of her mouth twitching as if she wanted to smile but didn't. She lowered her head to continue treating the wound.
Jiraiya walked up from behind.
He looked at the enemies scattered across the ground, then at Tsunade bandaging Kaede.
He remained silent for three seconds.
"Could you two stop being so lovey-dovey for a second? I've still got a hole in my shoulder."
Without looking up, Tsunade replied, "Didn't you pull it out?"
"I did, but it still hurts."
"It's supposed to hurt. It ans you're still alive."
"...Could you have a little more sympathy?"
"Save the sympathy for when we get back to the Hidden Leaf. I don't have ti for you right now."
Jiraiya opened his mouth to argue, then decisively shut it.
The corner of Kitahara Kaede's mouth twitched.
It wasn't quite a smile, but it was close.
Once Tsunade finished treating the wound and straightened up, the three of them looked toward the village simultaneously.
The faint sound of clashing tal echoed from that direction—intermittent sounds bouncing through the valley.
Murakami Takuya was still fighting.
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